Patient research work involving more than 5,000 photographs resulted in a one-minute film that AlmapBBDO, Sao Paulo, Brazil, created to advertise Getty Images, a leading image database for creating and distributing visual content. The film consists of 873 images from the Getty archives depicting the progression of life (by showcasing many people’s lives) from love to marriage to parenthood to golden years at a rate of some 15 images per second, sufficient speed to transform the series into a video that, without any text, tells a beautiful story.
Copywriter Sophie Schoenburg and art director Marcus Kotlhar of AlmapBBDO worked six months researching images, improving the script and building each scene so they would not only be understood, but would also touch viewers. Sometimes, for example, a scene would look perfect on paper, but the images chosen to depict it were not sufficient or did not perfectly match up to offer the right movement and sense. And hence the research had to be restarted. The film was directed by Cisma, via Paranoid BR, along with Marcos Kotlhar, the art director at the agency. (Cisma is repped stateside by Blacklist)
“It was a labor of love,” said Cisma. “Although it uses still images, we tried to make it dimensional with movement and by playing with perspective. All images are 100 percent from the Getty Images archive. The only thing we did was change the scale and rotation to build the stop-motion sequence. There’s so much in there that it’s a spot that should be watched frame by frame.”
For the creative team, the purpose was to adhere to the concept that Getty Images has so many images that anybody is capable of telling any story via the company’s archives.
SUPERLATIVE Signs Director Claudia Abend For Spots and Branded Content
Latin American director/editor and documentary filmmaker Claudia Abend has joined SUPERLATIVE for her first U.S. representation spanning commercials and branded content.
Abend's empathetic docu-style POV has garnered several international awards for the documentary films Hit (2008) and The Flower of Life (2018). Her spotmaking credits include such brands as Procter & Gamble, Nestle and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. SUPERLATIVE has already worked with Abend, together producing a new ad campaign for digital agency Tinuiti and The Honest Company, a consumer goods corporation featuring eco-minded products.
“We found Claudia through her poignant documentaries on the festival circuit,” said SUPERLATIVE creative manager Stefan Dezil. “We are excited about her textured narratives, emotional storytelling, and her powerhouse long-form storytelling abilities, currently on her third feature film. As SUPERLATIVE continues to build our brand after premiering our latest films at Sundance and SXSW, Claudia is the kind of multidimensional artist we are excited to partner with on branded content and beyond. Fluent in English and Spanish, her reel shows real prowess with infants, food and skin products, families both young and old. Great visual storytelling and inspirational doc work.”
Abend began her career in her native Uruguay, studying film and editing in college. “My dad would show me films like Citizen Kane,” she said. “I love cinema and became an editor. It was here that I learned all about communicating human emotion.”
From the get-go, Abend hit it big as a documentary director, teaming with Adrianna Loeff on Hit, a movie chronicling pop artists of Uruguayan music. Abend took home a Best Editing... Read More